NAM Traffic Simulator and Data View Help

[z]

Hi, is there any way of changing the type of underlying network the volume date view shows?

For example, i want to know at what volume an elevated highway if functioning, but the volume view is showing it for roads.

Unfortunately, this is not possible.  It appears that there are a fixed number of network views (I've tried adding others), and within the various road views, the different road networks all all treated the same; there is no way to differentiate between them.  Since roads are generally the most prevalent of all the road-type networks by far, I have used them as a reference for these views.  And although the colors on the highways don't correspond to congestion levels, they do represent the volume levels properly, following the legend on the right like everything else.  With our current state of knowledge, this is the best we can do.

[gabrielbyrnei]

Thanks for your answer

[six9nc]

I have read all of the post and I tried using sim-z with one of my older large cities (235K) and holy cow the traffic went to red and I got air pollution all over the city.  Then of course the typical population drop and abandonment.  Luckily I didnt save when all that happened instead I built some heavy rail to light rail switches.  I tried it again and it was worse.  So basically my show pony city is a ticking time bomb the next time I run the game since I saved after I built the light rail ...I have a decent subway system but rely on heavy rail to transport suburban workers to the several commercial nodes in the city.  The CDB is non-CAM big buildings with the largest concentration of subways.  I also have the full compliment of mass transit but apparently the game thinks I have a huge congestion problem.  It is a fairly dense city. I like to build cities as close to real as possible so some areas are dense and there are areas of large SFHs.  I need help guys; I wanna rescue my pride and joy so any suggestions will be taken very seriously.
Just to give a scope of the size of the city.

Sim-z works fine for my existing medium size cities.

[z]

The good news is that this is unlikely to be a problem with Simulator Z, and it should be easily fixable.  However, I'll need a little more information to figure out what the problem is.  First of all, which version of Simulator Z are you using?  I'll need the exact name of the file from your Network Addon Mod folder; it's the file that has "Plugin_Z" in its name.

[six9nc]

network addonmod-traffic plugin z medium

[z]

Do you have the Clean Air Act turned on?  Do you have any mods installed that affect traffic (besides the NAM)?  Which travel type is causing the congestion?  Please post a shot of the Traffic Volume Data View with that travel type selected.  If it's one of the mass transit types, please also post a shot of the Road Traffic selection in the Traffic Volume Data View.  Also, please post your extended RCI Demand Graph.

Simulator Z should not cause either excess pollution or abandonment, so it would seem that something else is going on here.  I would also suggest searching your Plugins folders for a copy of another traffic simulator that may be overriding Simulator Z.

[cubby420]

I have a question regarding the interaction of NAM traffic simulator Z and different RTMT capacities. In essence, I am woefully slow with these things and am kinda losing my head reading through the threads on these topics. I am attempting to make the switch to simulator Z, as I find many of the features intriguing and realistic, though I also want to adapt my RTMT capacity to a proper level to get the best and most true to life simulation.

Just to give everyone an idea of my typical playstyle, I rarely build giant metropolises and generally stick to small or large towns and small cities. I've never to my recollection constructed a city with population over 200,000 on a large city tile; this estimate already is much higher than my typical endeavor. I sprawl rather grow upwards. I normally integrate local rail, ground highways, and bus stops, with a small amount of GLR in central districts for most of my mass transport needs, and it more or less works for me if I need it to.

Essentially, I am confused about which simulator Z level(s) and RTMT capacity level(s) would best suit my playstyle and if periodic switching between different ones for different cities is the best way to go. Any help anyone could provide would be great! 

[k808j]

@cubby420

I recommend z_low and all the applicable RTMT low settings since your play style is small towns and cities.

@z

Is that modified ninja boulavard patch still needed with RTMT 3.6/Sim Z V2.1?

[z]

Essentially, I am confused about which simulator Z level(s) and RTMT capacity level(s) would best suit my playstyle and if periodic switching between different ones for different cities is the best way to go. Any help anyone could provide would be great! 

I agree with k808j that Simulator Z (Low) would probably be best for you.  You can always switch capacity levels without penalty, but I doubt that you will need to do so.

As for the RTMT stations, it turns out that all transit station capacities are misleading, and don't reflect the stations' actual capacity at all.  Transit station capacity simply doesn't work in the manner that it is shown.  (See this post for further details.)  As a result, the Low capacity is being eliminated in the next release of RTMT (although stations built with that capacity will still function properly).  Therefore, I recommend that everyone using RTMT use the High capacity version, regardless of what traffic simulator they're using.

Is that modified ninja boulavard patch still needed with RTMT 3.6/Sim Z V2.1?

Yes; that patch will continue to be recommended for future RTMT versions as well.

[cubby420]

Thanks both to k808j and z for the assist.

That's a very interesting post as well z. Very bizarre the ways this game functions sometimes...

[six9nc]

I investigating and it wasnt the Z it was my air pollution getting out of hand.  Kinda weird how it manifest itself so late.  Anyway planted trees and put in more mass transit also used a few air purifiers and poof the problem went away in about a year.   Thanks anyways for the suggestions.

[pierreh]

In this post I raise some questions about Simulator Z in the context of the Eternal Commuter syndrom. I hope that this is the proper place for the post.

A number of old cities that I developed before becoming sufficiently aware of the Eternal Commuter syndrom, exhibit it to various degree. In the oldest of my cities, the syndrom is present to a very high degree. That city had several connexions (streets, avenues, highways, railroads, even a subway line) with its neighbors. Of course it developed a very bad case of Eternal Commuters.

In order to at least contain the problem, and actually see what would happen, I severed most connexions between cities. In the city under consideration, the only links remaining are:
- highways, that can only be entered from the central area to reach neighbor cities)
- railroad lines, in which trains to neighbor cities can only be boarded at the main station in the central area.

Severing the other links caused abandonment in some residential areas, but after a while new houses were erected for Sims that are working in the city itself.

Some Sims appear however to be insisting on going to the closest neighbor city in their search for work, even if they have to endure a rather long commute, as shown in the example depicted below. The latest 'Euro-high' version of Simulator Z is used.

This picture shows the global day commute path for the Sims living in a residential building close to the right of the city tile:



This picture shows the detail of the start of the commute path, and the statistics for the building - all 128 residents travel the same path.



The complete commute path consists of:
- walk to the closest bus stop
- short bus ride to the subway station
- subway ride to a suburban train station
- local train ride to the main station
- intercity train ride to the border of the city tile (i.e. to the neighbor city)

--> Which shows that the Sims in that particular building travel, using foot, bus, subway and train, all the way to the main train station that is located in the central downtown part of the city, there to board a train that will take them to the neighbor city (to which their building is quite close). It is possible that the Sims in that particular building used to travel directly to the neighbor city when there was, close by, an avenue with a direct connexion. When the connexion was severed, a new, much longer and complex, route was computed by the Simulator so that the Sims could continue going to work (or search for work) in the neighbor city.

It is very likely that those Sims become Eternal Commuters when reaching the border.

This shows, too, that the Simulator is quite 'inventive' in finding paths to satisfy the travel habits of some Sims, and allows for long and complex commutes. Now, if I want to suppress this type of rather circuitous travelling, what would be the best way:

- Remove, at least temporarily, the few remaining connexions with neighbor cities, making the city totally self-contained, at the risk of large-scale abandonment?

- Delete the building in which long-commuting Sims live, and any buildings where the occupants exhibit the same behavior, expecting that the replacing buildings will be inhabited by Sims that will look for, and find, work in the city itself?

- Use another version of the Z Simulator, or another Simulator that does not support lenghty commute paths?

I will be interested in the interpretation of my findings and in comments and suggestions about them.

[z]

The good news is that your problem can be solved without switching simulators and without cutting off your city completely.  In fact, you can eliminate your problem completely and end up with more connections than you had before.

The key is in understanding how the Maxis traffic simulator engine works.  I'll explain the relevant parts here; for more details, please see A Guide to the Operation of the Traffic Simulator.

The traffic simulator decides where the Sim is going to work before the Sim ever starts out (either from the Sim's home, or from the border).  It typically looks for a destination that is close by; this is the job of the destination finder.  The destination finder doesn't look at what routes are actually available; it simply looks at the Manhattan distance from the source to the destination.  So if a Sim enters a city where the border to another city is closer to the first border than any suitable jobs are, the destination finder will assign the second border as the destination.  It then passes the job of getting the Sim to the destination to the pathfinder.

The pathfinder then tries to find the most efficient path to the destination.  If the Sim has entered the city on a highway that goes far away from the destination, that's just too bad; the destination has already been selected.  In such a case, the pathfinder will get the Sim off the highway as soon as possible, and then route the Sim to the original destination, effectively backtracking if necessary, and taking all sorts of twists and turns to get around any obstacles you've placed in the way.  It doesn't even matter if the Sim passes appropriate available jobs; the Sim continues on to the preselected destination.

The one sure way to break an eternal commute is to sever all connections between any single pair of cities in the commute loop.  You can have as many connections between the cities and other cities as you want, as long as there is no way that the Sims can travel in a loop.

It is often not even necessary to completely sever the connections between that one pair of cities, although you have to be very vigilant to make sure that a loop doesn't form.  If you keep your connections near the center of the border, and make sure that there are plenty of open jobs on both sides of the border that are appropriate for Sims of all wealth and education levels, then you can often connect even this final set of cities without generating an eternal commuter loop.

So that should give you enough information to prevent (or destroy) these loops.  Basically, you just have to occasionally sever connections on one side of a city to avoid this whole problem.

[pierreh]

Thanks a lot for the reply, the clear explanations, and especially for pointing me to the Guide - the existence of which I was not aware of, it is an extremely valuable compendium of information about the workings of the Simulators. I have read it all and understood most of it (except the maths about the value for the pathfinding heuristic, but I trust experts like you for that).

This leads to a further question/comment, before I make modifications to the city under scrutiny, as well as to others. In the case I illustrated above, it is now clear to me why all residents of the building go looking for work in the neighbor city by train: the Manhattan distance between the building and the rail connexion to the neighbor city at the edge of the the city tile, is smaller than the distance to the most proximate (and desirable/attractive) industrial or commercial area where they could find work: The destination finder decides that the building residents will go out through the rail connexion, and then the path finder finds a way to get there, regardless of the complexity.

Should one then conclude that the respective location of residential areas and of neighbor connexions (rail, road, etc) should always be selected carefully so that the 'temptation' of residents to go out of town can be minimized? In other words, no residence too close to a connexion? If this is the case - and there seems to be evidence for it - then this sort of imposes a design pattern in cities where residential areas are 'sandwiched' between commercial and industrial ones, and cannot be placed to close to the edge of a tile, unless there is no neighbor connexion there. Needless to say, I can live with this restriction, even though it means in some cases 'sacrificing' nice terrain to industry or commerce rather than residences.

[z]

Should one then conclude that the respective location of residential areas and of neighbor connexions (rail, road, etc) should always be selected carefully so that the 'temptation' of residents to go out of town can be minimized? In other words, no residence too close to a connexion? If this is the case - and there seems to be evidence for it - then this sort of imposes a design pattern in cities where residential areas are 'sandwiched' between commercial and industrial ones, and cannot be placed to close to the edge of a tile, unless there is no neighbor connexion there. Needless to say, I can live with this restriction, even though it means in some cases 'sacrificing' nice terrain to industry or commerce rather than residences.

This is one way to do things, and if you're careful you can make it work.  But you have to have plenty of open jobs generally of all types, since the Sims coming across the border could have originated from many different places, and may therefore be of many different kinds.  It's usually easier just to cut connections along one border, so that a loop is not geometrically possible.  Or take advantage of one border joining two cities that has only R and C buildings on both sides for a long stretch, and make your connections in the middle of that.  And cutting all connections along one border of an occasional city (which is all you need to do) is not going to create serious problems for the city's economy.  There's no need to modify your cities' geography; I've built my Chicago region faithfully to replicate the real city while using these rules, and I've managed to avoid (or destroy) all eternal commuter loops this way.

[cubby420]

Z, I don't want to get off-topic so apologies in advance, but in this and other threads you reference your Chicago region, which appears to double as a simulator testing ground and hobby region for you. Is there anywhere we can see your work (region stats, traffic data, and dare I say even eventful pics) on the Chicago region in this or another thread? I would love to see how simulator z has impacted your efforts to recreate a complex real-world traffic network. Plus, since I live in Chicago, your repeated tantalizing mention of this recreation has always excited me.

[z]

I stopped working on my original Chicago region almost two years ago, right as I got into modding - there simply wasn't time for both.  It's a region of 7.7 million Sims; only a few cities have been developed.  It's a very ordinary-looking region; I am, as they say, artistically challenged.  But it does look vaguely like Chicago.  Traffic stats vary depending on what simulator I'm using.  You can find various pictures of various kinds scattered throughout the Traffic Simulator Z Development and Theory thread.  If you have specific questions, I can answer them here.  But if you want more details in general, such as how to build a replica of Chicago, and more pictures, then perhaps I should start something on the MD board.  (As just one example, you need to know that the Chicago street grid is rotated 1.2° from true north and south, and you need to rotate your map accordingly.)  However, since you asked, I can at least show you the traffic map of my region here:



As usual, the red is highways, purple is 'L' lines, and dashed purple is the old Chicago Surface Lines - trolleys, or trams.  Even in this view, you can see Humboldt Park, Graceland Cemetery, and many of the smaller parks in the city.  There's the 'L' line running next to Milwaukee Ave. through Logan Square, and there's the beginning of the Stevenson Expressway.  The city runs from just north of Lawrence Ave. in the north to about 40th Street in the south, and you can see part of Kedzie in Logan Square.  Hope that helps...

[cubby420]

First off, thank you for entertaining the idea. Ordinary though it may be, that traffic map appears very true to form. I've been planning and planning on a Chicago recreation but really lack the mapping skills necessary to accomplish such a task. I for one would love to see how you approached and developed the recreation and this concept...

But if you want more details in general, such as how to build a replica of Chicago, and more pictures, then perhaps I should start something on the MD board.

...is exactly what I had in mind when I asked. Obviously such an undertaking is wholly up to you, but I think a MD type setting might reintroduce you some back to your Chicago region and serve as an interesting and useful example for fledgling recreationists like myself. Again...totally up to you. I for one, love and totally support the idea. 

[z]

I've been planning and planning on a Chicago recreation but really lack the mapping skills necessary to accomplish such a task. I for one would love to see how you approached and developed the recreation and this concept...

It's actually quite simple to do, once you have everything in place.  In just a little while, I'll have some time, and I'll make such an MD.  One of the hardest thing was finding a good Chicago region map (I used MallowTheCloud's) and then rotating it 1.2° - which I didn't do in this city.  I've done it for Chicago 2.0, but at this point I've forgotten how; it's nontrivial for .SC4M maps.  So when I start the MD, I'll post the rotated map and the config.bmp, along with a lot of other hints.

In the mean time, if you really want to do this, I'd strongly recommend picking up a copy of the Chicago and Cook County Street Guide.  I've linked to the 2009 version at Amazon, which you can get for $15.  Between that, Google Maps, and Google Earth, it's pretty straightforward.

I'd also recommend getting ardecila's downloads from the STEX - they're full of Chicago landmarks, as well as transit stations.  I'd also suggest honing your skills for building big cities in Hard mode; although I built Chicago in Easy mode, sticking to the layout of the city provides more than enough challenge.

That should do it for now - I'll make a brief post here when I start that MD.

[pierreh]

Thanks a lot, z, for sharing with us your Chicago region. If you start a MD about it I will certainly be quite interested. At this point I have a question related to the famous Eternal Commuter problem, which continues to occupy me quite a lot.

I notice that you have city squares that are offset in the north-south direction. For example, the 3 city squares at the bottom of your region: Near West Side, Downtown and Near South Side. How did you avoid triangular eternal commuting, either clockwise or counterclockwise, between those 3 city tiles? As near as I can determine, you have several connexions between each city square and the two others, both horizontally (Near West Side <--> Downtown) and vertically (Near West Side <--> Near South Side and Downtown <--> Near South Side). This should encourage triangular eternal commutes, especially since, in the north-south direction, it is not possible to locate the connexions between city squares close to their respective median border locations.

The reason of my question is that I have a similar situation of offset city squares in my current region, which has triggered heavy triangular flows of commuters.